the alt-right

underlying attitude is that they're speaking for a quiet majority.

well tbf 58% of white voters and 81% of evangelicals are ceratinly sympathetic

just got this targeted ad on facebook

http://i.imgur.com/dOmN8zS.png

Early last year Farrakhan said something like “Trump is peeling back the onion of white civility”

this kind of will towards violence from typically pacifist leftists would have been easily placated with someone like the homie Barack in office making all the right noises and singing the right songs

instead you get dog whistle “many sides” bullshit from the most powerful man in the country and suddenly belief in an inexorable social progress doesn’t quite feel equal to an emboldened far right

I mean it wouldn’t occur to me that white nationalism is any less abhorrent and deleterious if somebody hadn’t driven a challenger through a crowd. by that same token I think the vast majority of people are fully aware of which side they fall on before they read the news.

the definitive lightning rod in American political and social life has always been race. Ain’t nobody out here waiting to hear who was more violent before forming an opinion

xp Does it happen to have a flag painted on the roof?

so . . . guess where trump winery is!

http://www.trumpwinery.com/contact/

surely this is a coincidence, right? right?

"seems obvious to me that any violence (other than pure self-defense) from "the Left" weakens "our" position."

how can you weaken your position against racist nazis? being able to legally punch a nazi should be in the constitution.

going high has gone so well in the battle against fascism/white supremacy

like I remember that one KKK gathering where all of the counterprotesters shouted "YOU SAY HORRIBLE THINGS, BUT WE DEFEND YOUR RIGHT TO SAY THEM!" and whole Nazis realized hateful incitement was bad and abandoned their hoods and held hands with the protesters.

Not using violence, while absorbing violence, isn't about converting the people who are doing you violence, but about turning bystanders in your favor and against those who are doing you violence. This should not be hard to grasp. The difficulty comes when the vast majority of the bystanders have only a heavily-mediated experience those events.

yes but as your last sentence correctly states, the "bystanders" tend to hold the protesters to a higher standard than the people they're protesting

the shooting against Scalise turned into a narrative of "see, it's leftist encouragement of violence that led to this" even as those on the left immediately condemned the shooting, whereas yesterday's act of violence gets called an "accident" for hours on a major tv network even after others had correctly identified what it *really* was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vsXyOTelJo

The creator of Godwin's Law says it all

By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you.

— Mike Godwin (@sfmnemonic) August 14, 2017

I wound up on the news, and I look ridiculous

http://wnep.com/2017/08/13/peace-rally-in-lewisburg-in-response-to-violence-in-virginia/

you totally didn't look ridiculous and you were totally OTM.

Defriended an old Jewish high school friend for his tu quoque "BLM is just as bad" shit.

What year is this fuuuck

yeah ray your grimace of disgust = otm

thanks guys. i'm just weird about seeing myself on camera or hearing my recorded voice.

Awesome raymond, good,on ya

Stupid phone argh

FWIW I'm antidefriending in all but the most extreme cases. The echo chamber needs to be disrupted.

The thing I'm having the hardest time with right now is the unbridled rage that I feel. I've never so badly wanted to put my own body out there on the front line, but I'm a 37-year-old dad and I owe it to my family not to risk street brawls. I'd probably be a lot less effective in one than my rage trip is telling me I would be too.

This song in my head all day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tlEK2SvXqw

FWIW I'm antidefriending in all but the most extreme cases. The echo chamber needs to be disrupted.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read outside the echo chamber all the time. I don't need to read someone who I haven't seen but once in the last 18 years say something that, if he was to say it to me in public, would lead me to walk away from this person....out of some misguided sense of loyalty. it's fucking FACEBOOK.

like we stop talking to friends for things much more benign than neo-nazi apologia

No I more mean that people like him need to have people disrupt their echo chambers. But W/E, you have every right to unfriend whoever you want. I already live in such an echo chamber that the only political arguments in my feed are left vs liberal. And it's not like I try to curate my friends that way, I've just always lived in unconservative places.

oh I feel you, I misread what you meant - and yeah, I agree with you on that. this was someone who I tried and failed w/ many times in recent years.

re: the last sentence, yeah there are maybe two Trump voters on my wall, and it's not like I've deliberately sussed out people's beliefs before I ever talk to them, it's just that conservatives and me never tend to have convos that end well IRL so we don't become friends

Pence can say what he wants about his aspersions in 2020, but this isn't the first time he hasn't felt Trumpolini's message was too diluted and broke with him to deliver a more pointed message.

my wife relieves stress by getting people banned from twitter. she looks for hate speech and reports it. it works for her.

alt-right people in particular.

going high has gone so well in the battle against fascism/white supremacy

getting violent has gone so well in the battle to win over people to liberal causes and beliefs

well this as there's no detente then *flies to Mars*

getting violent has gone so well in the battle to win over people to liberal causes and beliefs

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, August 13, 2017 9:56 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

worked pretty well in WWII

facism/white supremacy had been an extreme fringe belief system leading up to WWII and even more so after. even most of white society finds it abhorrent. going around "punching nazis" or whatver does what exactly to destroy it? this rally was billed as the largest gathering of these shitheads in, what, 20 yrs? Scum from 1000 miles away came. Yet there was still only, what, 1000 of them there? Demand that authorities break up these groups. persecute them, out them, arrest them if at all possible. If that doesn't work, then sure squash them like bugs. I am for non-violence if at all possible, and obv any deaths/injuries are tragic but I am not willing to discard my beliefs so easily. Plus yeah seems somewhat counterproductive.

you think the violence against Nazis is what got people to oppose them??
these ARE nazis but this is not WWII. yes, we don't want things to progress further and lament that we didn't nip it in the bud while we had a chance. but getting pre-emptively violent with them at this point is neither smart tactics or morally laudable imo.

Violence against Nazis is what ended Nazism and made most of Europe a liberal society for the last 70 years.

I mean I'm willing to debate strategy/tactics. As I said upthread, I don't think violence should be the automatic, knee-jerk response, and I don't think it poorly-thought-out, random lashing out type of violence is necessarily effective. But let's face it, the people who descended on Charlottesville were there to start a riot. Once they start it, what do you do? Tell people not to fight back?

No I more mean that people like him need to have people disrupt their echo chambers.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive)

this tends not to work out in practice. nobody is going to reconsider their beliefs because one of their 153 friends is outspokenly anti-racist.

Violence against Nazis is what ended Nazism and made most of Europe a liberal society for the last 70 years.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive)

none of us are fucking eisenhower here, we're rosa luxemburg.

I don't think it changes people's beliefs but I do actually think it weakens people's confidence and makes them more circumspect.

none of us are fucking eisenhower here, we're rosa luxemburg.

― The Saga of Rodney Stooksbury (rushomancy), Sunday, August 13, 2017 10:16 PM (forty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm just saying that battles are never won by morality. They are won by power. There are lots of forms of power, and many of them are non-violent, but some of them are violent. And sometimes the violent kind is effective, and sometimes it's the only kind that's effective.

self defense is not "violence", man alive otm

as the memes say, we literally fought a war over this. these people literally want to kill us, and are doing so. I totally agree that non-violent demonstrations are ideal and more effective, but I also side with the neighborhood folks who physically prevented these assholes from doing home invasions in a nearby housing project. sometimes you have to fight back.

why would my hypothetical fascist ass be more "circumspect" around an anti-fascist casual acquaintance when i can (1) unfriend them myself (2) set up my friends list so that i don't share with my anti-fascist "friend" (3) ignore everything they have to say while remaining "friends" with them or (4) all of the above? this shit isn't "disruption" except in the meaningless silicon valley buzzword sense, and internet "confrontation" is a fucking joke.

Once they start it, what do you do? Tell people not to fight back?

Thought I've been pretty clear in saying I'm against pre-emptive violence against neo-Nazis, in 2017. I am pro violence against WW2 nazis (ie the ones who invaded countries, rounded up Jews etc) and am pro self-defense against neo-Nazis.
This isn't WW2. The 70 yrs since has dealt with nazism by shunning and legal justice. This is the strategy I support now.

xp http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/conversion-via-twitter-westboro-baptist-church-megan-phelps-roper

I'm just saying that battles are never won by morality. They are won by power. There are lots of forms of power, and many of them are non-violent, but some of them are violent. And sometimes the violent kind is effective, and sometimes it's the only kind that's effective.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive)

i'm not making the moral argument for non-violence nor am i going to waste my time wagging my finger at someone who punches back when they get hit. i simply have yet to see any persuasive evidence that vigilante anti-fascist violence is a strategically effective use of "power".

http://i.imgur.com/EqgvG8n.gif

^^ a strategically effective use of power

emotionally effective, sure

i bet james hodgkinson wanted to be that guy pretty bad.